In the manufacture of tissue products, such as bath tissue and paper towels, rolls of tissue webs are provided with transverse lines of perforation to separate the tissue web into individual “sheets” which are detached from the roll by the user by tearing the tissue web along a perforation line. Existing tissue converting equipment imparts perforations to the web by passing the tissue web through a nip between a stationary anvil and a rotating toothed blade. Either the anvil or the blade is skewed in the direction of travel to spread the impact of the blade against the anvil to reduce vibration while maintaining a cutting line perpendicular to the direction of sheet travel. The high speed impact of the blade against the anvil requires hardened steel components with an accurate set up and naturally results in low blade and anvil life and requires frequent maintenance. Also, while it is known that there are advantages to having sheet perforations which are configured differently than the conventional straight perforation lines in order to improve dispensing of the sheets from the roll, a limitation of current perforating systems is that they are substantially limited to providing a single straight line of perforations in the sheet.
It can be seen that what is needed is equipment and a process for making a wide variety of perforation patterns and which is easy to adjust and maintain.